Bd. of Educ. of Illinois v. Bakewell

• Decision Date: 24 January 1887
• Parties: BOARD OF EDUCATION OF STATE OF ILLINOIS v. BAKEWELL.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

122 Ill. 339

10 N.E. 378

BOARD OF EDUCATION OF STATE OF ILLINOIS

v.BAKEWELL.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

January 24, 1887.

Appeal from circuit court, McLean county.

Mandamus.

A joint resolution has the force of law; and joint resolutions have been sustained in the following cases: People v. Tyndale, 47 Ill. 540;Burr v. City of Carbondale, 76 Ill. 474;Ward v. Bartholomew, 6 Pick. 410;People v. Learned, 5 Hun, 626.

The matters of fact recited in the preambles of the joint resolutions cannot be traversed. These matters are to be taken as conclusively true, and are not reviewable by the courts. Angle v. Runyon, 38 N. J. Law, 403; Jersey City & B. R. Co. v. Hoboken R. Co., 20 N. J. Eq. 76;People v. Dayton, 55 N. Y. 384.

The legislature has full power to discharge legal or equitable obligations of the state. The legislature is not restricted, in granting relief, to such grounds as would be requisite to maintain an action against an individual in courts of justice. Many other considerations may and often should be considered in the dealings of a state with its citizens. The exercise of this power is not reviewable by the courts. People v. Dayton, 55 N. Y. 367;Town of Guilford v. Cornell, 18 Barb. 615;Town of Guilford v. Supervisors Chenango Co., 13 N. Y. 143;Burr v. City of Carbondale, 76 Ill. 474.

SCOTT, C. J., and SCHOLFIELD and SHOPE, JJ., dissenting.

James S. Ewing, for the Board of Education, appellant.

H. Spencer, R. E. Williams, and A. G. Karr, for Julia A. Bakewell, appellee.

SHELDON, J.

On February 18, 1857, the general assemby of this state passed ‘An act for the establishment and maintenance of a normal university,’ whereby certain named persons and their successors were created a body corporate and politic, to be styled ‘The Board of Education of the State of Illinois.’ Laws 1857, p. 298. The fifth section of the act provided for the appointment of an agent who should visit the cities, villages, and other places in the state which might be deemed eligible for the purpose, to receive donations and proposals for the establishment and maintenance of the Normal University, and gave power to the board to fix the permanent location of such university at the place where the most favorable inducements were offered for that purpose. On February 25, 1858, Edwin W. Bakewell and Julia A. Bakewell, his wife, who joined in the deed for the purpose of relinquishing her inchoate right of dower, conveyed to the Board of Education of the State of Illinois 40 acres of land immediately joining the university grounds. The only condition contained in the deed was the following: ‘Provided, the Normal University, under the control of the said Board of Education of the State of Illinois, shall forever remain where now located.’ On February 9, [122 Ill. 341]1860, the said Edwin W. Bakewell and his wife united in another deed to the said Board of Education of the State of Illinois, which, after reciting the execution of the former deed, and the condition therein, contained the following: ‘And whereas, the said Edwin W. Bakewell and Julia A. Bakewell, his wife, are willing and anxious to vacate and annul said condition to said deed, and to make the title of the said Board of Education of the State of Illinois to the said land conveyed by said deed become and be absolute in fee-simple, now, therefore, this indenture, made and entered into this ninth day of February, 1860, by and between the said Edwin W. Bakewell and Julia A. Bakewell, his wife, and the said Board of Education of the State of Illinois, witnesseth, that they convey a full and complete and unconditional title in fee-simple in and to the said forty acres.’ The university still remains established where it was at the time of the making of the first deed.

The general assembly, by a joint resolution passed in 1883, by a majority of a quorum only, directed that the State Board of Education execute a conveyance in fee-simple of the said 40 acres of land to Julia A. Bakewell. This joint resolution recites in its preamble that the land was deeded in 1858 upon certain conditions to be fulfilled by the Board of Education, and that said conveyance was conditional, dependent for its validity upon the performance of said conditions, and that the conditions had not been complied with. The Board of Education refused to comply with the direction, and at its session in 1885 the general assembly again, by a joint resolution passed by a majority of a quorum, declared that the title to said 40 acres of land should be and was thereby declared vested in Julia A. Bakewell. A demand for the possession of the property was made upon the board and refused. Thereupon Julia A. Bakewell filed a petition in the circuit court of McLean county for a writ of mandamus commanding the Board of Education of the State of Illinois to execute a deed to her for the said 40 acres of land. The cause was tried by the court without a jury, and a peremptory writ of mandamus was awarded. The defendant appealed.

Two questions are made upon this record: Whether the legislature had the constitutional power to order the conveyance of this 40 acres of land to be made to Julia A. Bakewell; and, if so, whether it could exercise such power by a joint resolution.

As to the character of the Board of Education of the State of Illinois, in the respect of its being a public or a private corporation, this ground was most fully gone over by this court in the case of this same Board Ed. v. Greenebaum, 39 Ill. 610, and the character of the corporation declared, and we need in this regard but to refer to that decision. That was a proceeding brought against this Board of Education to enforce a mechanic's lien for work and labor done upon the university building. The contract was made in 1860, and the decision rendered in 1864. It was said in the opinion: ‘The principal objection to the recovery in this case, and the one most pressed, is that the Board of Education is a corporation founded by the state, and supported by the funds of the state, and that its property is the property of the state, and therefore not subject to a mechanic's lien. To determine the force of this objection, the act of 1857 must be considered, and the additional act of 1861.’ The latter act was one entitled ‘An act to refund the interest on the college or university fund, and to appropriate the same for the use of the State Normal University.’ After recapitulating in detail all the several provisions of these two acts, it was further said: ‘From this legislation the plaintiffs in error insist that the property of the Normal University is the property of the state, in which the corporation have no interest whatever; that it was created for certain public purposes, in which the whole state has an interest, and certain rights secured to each county in the state. * * * The counsel also insists that the legislature have the absolute right to repeal or modify the charter, and that from the act of 1861 it is manifest it was not the intention of the legislature that the property held in the name of the board should be sequestered and sold by creditors or others; that the corporation is a mere trustee or agent of the state to carry out the wishes and intention of the legislature,’ etc. And, after stating that the court's view of this legislation differed materially from that of plaintiffs in error, and that it had not been able to find in either of these acts any provisions on which to base such a view as that of plaintiffs in error, or any power reserved to the legislature to appeal or modify the charter, the opinion proceeds: ‘We regard this university as an eleemosynary institution, founded for the purpose of the gratuitous distribution of knowledge of the art of teaching and conducting common schools, and erected, not at the expense of the state, but of individuals. An agent was to be appointed by the corporation to visit the different cities, villages, and other places in the state, deemed eligible for the purpose, to receive donations and proposals, for the establishment and maintenance of the university, and its permanent location was to be fixed at the place where the most favorable inducements were offered for that purpose. The salaries of the instructors and other employes are fixed by the board, and no appropriation has ever been made from the state treasury for its maintenance. This is one feature which distinguishes it from our state institutions, properly so called, such as the asylum for the blind, etc. It is true, the state applied the interest of the university and seminary fund to aid in maintaining this university, but that interest did not belong to the state. The state held it as a mere trustee under the compact with the general government, and it was specially devoted by that compact to a college or university. The act of 1857 expressly provides that no part of this fund should be applied to the purchase of sites or for buildings for this university. * * * This building, with the ground upon which it was erected, was a free gift by charitable individualsto the corporation, not to the state, and there cannot, therefore, exist any obligation on the part of the state to defray any of the expenses attending its erection. Its whole history shows it to be the result of private munificence.’

As said by Blackstone: ‘Corporations of the eleemosynary sort are such as are constituted for the distribution of the free alms or bounty of the founder of them to such persons as he has directed, of which kind are all hospitals for the maintenance of the poor, sick, and impotent, and all colleges.’ 1 Bl. Comm. 471.

Mr. Justice STORY, in his opinion in the case of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 4 Wheat. 669, says: ‘Another division of corporations is into public and private. Public corporations are generally esteemed such as exist for public political purposes only, such as towns, cities, parishes, and counties; and in many respects they are so,...